I think the defect which causes Atom C2000 processors to fail after 18 months comes to mind, to both businesses that bought the equipment and the equipment manufacturers that used them.

This batch of chips looks like it was designed for someone in mind that was going to buy a bunch of them. They then tossed it over the wall and said others can get it too. Probably some sort of IoT type situation where power is a concern with an occasional burst of work. Something where you are 95% idle and then that 5% you want a bit of perf within a particular power budget. Something like a TV, cablebox, or a wake up sample send data in goto sleep situation.

They are probably referring to pre-silvermont(pre-2013) which were in-order execution.